My New Bead Style: High Contrast Focals

When I was working in my studio on Sunday I took a break from all the red and white and made a high contrast flower focal. I think this style has been percolating in my mind for some time. I've been increasingly forcing myself to slow down and be mindful about defining and executing a unified design style. While I'm still playing around with a lot of different materials to figure out how I want to support the lampwork and metal that's at the core of my work, I've honed in on lines and bright colors as the two elements that dominate my best work.

On my Flickr photostream you'll see more views of this bead and notice that the back of the bead, where I put some small yellow flowers, left something to be desired. But while this one bead needs some work, I realized that I really do like this bead style a lot. So, yesterday I worked a little more on this style of bead. It's a challenge because the contrast of the colors against the black background shows everything. While that means glaring imperfection at this point, I'm dreaming of perfect sexy squggles on the horizon.

Obviously these beads don't, yet, represent perfection; but, now I have a much better idea of how to achieve it. Specifically, I need to find a better balance between the focal design and the coordinating designs and the colors of those designs around the focus and on the back of the bead. I also need to make the starting and stopping ends of the stringer work prettier, and just make the stringer work flow better and have consistent spacing. I think I'm already making progress there. The first bead I did was the "rainbow" bead, second from the right, and I think that one is the worst of the lot. The small round one was second, and I have to admit that bead looks a little confused. But the others look better, so I have high hopes for progress.

For now, I think I've got a good start. I do like the contrast; the way the black makes the lines look crisp and bold. It makes my heart happy :) So, what do you think? Can you imagine a jewelry design you'd use these in?

Thank for reading!
Cheers,
Julie